Comedy Under the Disco Ball – 8:00pm (signups at 7:30) at L2, 2201 South St., Philadelphia

If you run a Philadelphia-area comedy show or open mic let us know so we can share it on our calendar and in our daily show round-ups by sending us the information from our submit a show page to contact@witout.net.

SO: I thought we were doing it separately. I object. I want to do it separately.

AO: I’ll be right back. I have to get stoked for this.

CO: Do you think I’m funny?

(Laughter)

AO: It depends on what day it is.

SO: Monday, Wednesdays, and Saturdays. Not so much on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

CO: All right… That went well. Let’s move on.

AO: It depends on whether I’m being your mom, or going to see you in something.

CO: Was there a moment when I was growing up that you thought, “Hey, this kid might one day think she’s a comedian?”

SO: Yes.

AO: Every night at dinner from the time you were about… Oh, I guess a year… you would wait, everyone would sit at the dinner table, and you would stand up in your high chair and say, “It’s showtime.”

CO: Do you have anything else to add, dad?

SO: Always. Right from the beginning.

AO: Before you were even here, it was a joke. You were one of God’s little jokes. Should we get into that? Do you want to tell that story?

SO: No, don’t.

CO: Explain the Harold.

AO: Harold who? No. I know there’s beats. What do you know about it?

SO: What?

AO: The Harold.

SO: The Harold? I don’t even know what we’re talking about.

AO: The type of improv she does. There’s three sections and so many beats to each section, but I can’t figure it out from watching it. I need a drum to find the beats.

SO: Can I say anything about the other?

AO: Organic’s too noisy.

SO: I like it better than the other.

CO: How do you feel about improv?

AO: I like it. Some’s funnier than others. We can go back into that again…

SO: I think it’s really hard when you have 5 or 6 people on stage not to end up with one or two people who dominate… to be honest.

AO: I still don’t believe that you don’t use stuff that you did in rehearsal. If it’s failing and flailing and you have good stuff that you did in rehearsal. Why not use it?

CO: We don’t.

AO: Well, then I guess I just don’t get the rehearsals. But yeah, I like improv, I come see you all the time. Some nights are funnier than others, just like some days you’re funnier than others. I could have said it depends what side of the bed you woke up on.

CO: Do you have a favorite Davenger moment?

SO: I think there’s been a lot of funny moments. The only thing I can think of pointing to is always your first improv show is the best, because you don’t really know what to expect and it’s better than what you expect it to be. That’s the only way I can put it.

AO: The show where Hilary played Hans and you were in relaxation therapy, but you were afraid of rubber bands and they kept stressing you out with them; that was the therapy. Then you were doing bumper cars and Kevin made you kill a child, and the show ended with Hilary saying, “You’ve been Hans-ed.”

CO: When you brag about me to your friends, what’s the first thing you say? When answering, please remember this is a comedy article that all my funny friends will see (so maybe say something about how hilarious I am).

SO: I don’t know, I just say you’ve been performing on stage since as long as I can remember. What was she 7 or 8? And we’ve always enjoyed…

AO: I was always stunned when she started doing improv because I was always thought she was a drama queen.

SO: Oh no, I think she should do stand up comedy. That’s the natural extension.

AO: I’d always seen her in dramas and the first time I saw her in a role when she was funny, like overtly physically funny, all the physicality, expressions, timing. I was blown away by it. And the role in that play was dumb, so you took it to the absurd, and it was really funny.

CO: What do you think about me performing comedy?

AO: I’d like to see you push it more. You still look to me like you hesitate, and you allow other people to continue when I know there’s something hidden behind your little smile that’s probably funny.

SO: Well, I’ve always liked some of the more physical humor, like Dick Van Dyke, or people that do physical, Jack Tripper, people that do physical comedy. And I remember at the last show I went to, that was the remark I made to Dan the way, out of the blue, he does this contortion with his body. I think that the expressions and the actions are as important as what comes out of your mouth sometimes.

CO: Do you think I should try stand up?

SO: Yes. Absolutely. What are you waiting for?

AO: I think you should because I think you’re a good writer, and I think if you put your mind to it… but sometimes you’re lazy.

SO: A lot of people that do stand up comedy are afraid of the audience. A lot of them. I remember distinctly Johnny Carson was afraid of crowds.

AO: Oh boy, Dad’s gonna give you a history lesson. I think it’s hard for females. A guy can get away with any raw comment, but when a female does it…

CO: What do you think my opening joke should be?

AO: One time at band camp… No.vDon’t say the lawn mower joke, Steve.

SO: No, you don’t do jokes. You do more like something that happened to you on the way to the place… or…

AO: Let me tell you about my mother…? That’s always a good place to start. Here’s to the mothers, it’s their fault.

SO: You could open it with the two girls in diapers.

CO: What?

AO: No idea what you’re talking about.

SO: Dogs in diapers it’s a funny image.

AO: Oh, the girls.

SO: To me part of doing stand up is relating stories about people that you know.

SO: Uh, so I’m just gonna say you to get it out of the way then. Current comedian? Probably, Lewis Black. I like Seinfeld.

AO: I pick Robin Williams.

AO: Yeah, I like Robin Williams. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler.

SO: Oh yeah, Tina Fey.

CO: Anything else you want to add?

AO: I think you should push it. I think you should pursue it.

SO: You could create a character like um… what’s her name did… SNL… Gilda Radner.

AO: Oh, I know who I love, Gilda Radner’s husband, Gene Wilder.

SO: When you can develop something where you get into character, you can really go with it, rather than standing there and telling jokes, you can be in character.

AO: You do that well. I can see your acting experience. I like when improv has a connection to the acting.

Cait currently improvises with Philly Improv Theater house team Davenger directed by the amazing Maggy Keegan. She can also be seen in improv duos DupliCate and Mr. and Mrs.

If you are a Philadelphia-area comedian who’d like to interview one (or both) of your parents send us an email to contact@witout.net for more information. Go ahead, do it. You should really call your parents more anyways.

If you run a Philadelphia-area comedy show or open mic let us know so we can share it on our calendar and in our daily show round-ups by sending us the information from our submit a show page to contact@witout.net.

If you run a Philadelphia-area comedy show or open mic let us know so we can share it on our calendar and in our daily show round-ups by sending us the information from our submit a show page to contact@witout.net.

I was at an open mic recently when no less than six straight comedians did a bit about vaginal smell. This is not uncommon. Every open mic has a lot of comics who talk a lot about vaginal smell.

This is a problem.

Here are the reasons why this is problematic:

If at least half of the performers are doing material about a topic, you should probably not do material about that topic. The main point about open mics is to get better and to find a way to get booked at an actual show. You think doing the same exact thing as everyone else is going to get you there?*

If the material is something a doofus high school kid would say in the locker room, you should probably not do material about that topic. (I put something on my Twitter about this. A response from someone: “What, is everyone in Philly comedy 16?”)

Doing bits about vaginal smell essentially boils down to saying “girls are icky.” Confusion about sex is a great concept for a bit that’s incredibly relatable. However, the joke should be about how confusing it is for both parties (or, even better, the performer). The joke shouldn’t be about vaginal smell. You’re just coming off like some creep wanna-be lothario bragging about doing a sex act.

I put something about this on my Facebook wall. Here is a comment my friend Alanna (a girl and not my wife) said about vaginal smell jokes: “Anecdotally, I have found that men who trash women and their vaginas the most are the men who seldom have the opportunity to get inside one.”

Just a head’s up as to what a girl who frequents comedy shows thinks about your jokes about girl parts.

Making a joke about smelly girl parts is making fun of someone’s body. Would you make a joke about someone in the crowd who is overweight? I would hope not. And I’m not saying this to be sensitive or PC. I’m saying this because making fun of an overweight person (or something similar) is just bullying.

Stage time is precious. Open mics give you, what, five minutes at the most? You’re going to use five minutes of stage time to talk about something almost everyone else is talking about that most men have stopped talking about when they hit college? Be better than that. Respect the stage. Try to do something different and unique and new. That’s why I love going to comedy shows.

I’m not god’s gift to comedy. I know this. I’ve done really well at some shows and I’ve bombed at a lot more. But anytime I get on a stage I try to do something that the audience hasn’t seen or heard before that reflects my personality. You really want to tell a group of mostly strangers that your personality largely revolves around high school lunch humor?

* To show I’m not a PC prude – there have been a lot of pro-gay marriage bits lately. I support gay marriage. But again – if 10 people are talking about gay marriage, do you really want to talk about gay marriage?

Vaginal smell jokes are not a problem as serious as rape jokes, which has become the dumbest controversy in modern comedy because it shouldn’t be a controversy since no one should tell a rape joke. I have to applaud the Philly open mic community because the amount of comics telling rape jokes at one point approached the 50 percent mark. It’s now down to roughly 25 percent, and it appears that most of the comics telling jokes about committing sex crimes with punchlines at the expense of victims are new to the scene.**

**I talked with a young comic who had a rape joke up front in his otherwise pretty brainy set and told him he (and hopefully he took it in the right way – I was trying to offer advice and hopefully I didn’t come off like a dick, but I probably did) should get rid of it because he was better than that. He seemed to agree with my statement. But he said he was nervous since the night was sort of dead and he knew that he’d get a laugh. I get that – god knows my earliest comedy used shock nonsense (and probably a rape joke) as a safety blanket. But then I learned the difference between a shock laugh and an earned laugh and I think this kid will get that difference soon. Respect.

Gregg Gethard has been performing comedy in some form since 2007 and is best known for hosting/producing the long-running Bedtime Stories and co-hosting The Holding Court Podcast. He will be hosting A Comedy Tribute to Boston on Sunday, June 23 at L’Etage (624 S. 6th Street) at 7 pm. He will also appear live on the Used Wigs podcast on May 21st at 8 pm (also at L’Etage). He can be followed on Twitter @holdingcourtpod.

Brian Six is a member of the B.A. Comedian comedy group (Six plus Dan King, Andrew Sposato and Tim Raymus). Along with Philly comic Jess Carpenter, they have taken the former R Open Mic and relaunched it as Comedy Under the Disco Ball at L2 Restaurant & Bar, 2201 South Street.

I spoke with Brian Six at their one-month anniversary open mic at L2 to talk about the new location and other B.A. Comedian projects.

Chris Dolan: Talk about the new space at L2 – how did you decide on it?

Brian Six: We came to this one because my roommate, who’s a bartender, was coming here on Sunday nights for reggae night. He was talking to Nate, the L2 owner, who expressed some interest in comedy. Then I talked to Nate and I was obviously blown back a little [looking at the room] cause I was like ‘This is different…” But we were on the same page.

When we were at RBar, we had an idea of our show, and they had their own ideas about our show. L2 seemed like a better fit for us. So we came here, and the transition’s been really smooth. It’s going great. The space is bigger….

CD: You got a couch.

BS: Yeah, we got a couch. The bathrooms are bigger.

CD: I swear to God, last time I was here I didn’t get up off that red chair [a very comfy IKEA ‘Poang’ model adjacent to the couch] until I had to perform.

BS: The only difference is [as of now] there’s no stage here. But we’re making one.

CD: But you have a disco ball.

BS: Exactly.

CD: Anything else stand out about the room?

BS: Well, there’s the floor.you called it something…

CD: I can’t recall, it was a Mayor McCheese joke [Note: the floor looks like its colors were pulled directly from the color palette of original McDonald’s restaurants].

CD: Who was involved in the transition?

BS: I came up here, Dan King came with me. And all of us said ‘yup’. It’s a different room. We like it cause it’s unique, so we can have some fun with it. The location’s great; we have a lot more walk-through traffic than at RBar. Every comic has been really positive about it. Nate has been nothing but supportive in terms of advertising and helping us out. We feel like we’re gonna be here a long time.

CD: How did Jess Carpenter get involved?

BS: We brought Jess Carpenter in at RBar cause he had ideas for shows and he’s been [running shows] a lot longer. Comedian Deconstruction, Not Just Comedy…so we brought Jess in and he’s been only positive for the show, and the boys of BA Comedian have been all on board with Jess.

BS: What happened was Dan King, Tim Raymus and Ben Fidler had gotten together to do a skit: “Cards on the Table.” They did that and I loved it. I’ve known Ben since we started. So we started writing and it clicked. When B.A. Comedian and Lawnboys got together it was an easy thing…it was awesome. So now we developed a new idea that features Mike Logan; we’re working on that.

CD: Are all the scripts Logan-centric, or are there others?

BS: Right now we’re still on the Logan idea. But we have another concept which Ben, Mike DiAlto and Tim Raymus developed, which is more of a TV series type thing. It’s kind of like 3 different stories…Ben, Mike, and Tim and all of their stories converge together. That should shoot the end of May. Another is “Simple Answers with Ben Fidler.” Those are two-minutes interviews that comics have with Ben, and you have to give honest answers to simple questions.

CD: Wrapping up: any other shows or showcases?

BS: We’re gonna start a monthly show here at L2. I think that’s also where Jess comes in, he does a great job with monthly shows. And I think Jess will take the wheel for those. As for the mic at L2—I think everybody’s having fun.

Chris Dolan is a comic who lives in the Philly burbs. Follow him on Twitter @CMDolan99. You can also see Chris host the Totally Free Comedy Showon June 8th at Nineteen19 in Havertown, PA.

If you run a Philadelphia-area comedy show or open mic let us know so we can share it on our calendar and in our daily show round-ups by sending us the information from our submit a show page to contact@witout.net.

If you run a Philadelphia-area comedy show or open mic let us know so we can share it on our calendar and in our daily show round-ups by sending us the information from our submit a show page to contact@witout.net.

This Sunday, students from the latest PHIT Conservatory course will perform their first HYDRA, a format they developed over the eight weeks of the class. The group was instructed and directed by Steve Kleinedler, who also directs PHIT House Team Hot Dish. Back in February, Steve told us what he had planned for his students—now, here they are to talk about what they learned, and what we can expect from their four-show run.

WitOut: Describe the experience of participating in a PHIT Conservatory course.

Meredith Weir: The PHIT Conservatory course gave me the opportunity to work with Philly improvisers I’d never shared a stage with. A decent number of the students in class had traveled through the PHIT curriculum over the last year together, so some chemistry was already there and I think that really helped move our team/class along. There was a lot of emphasis on group mind; we created our own warm-ups (that sometimes ran over an hour), and did 40-ish minute runs during the first couple weeks just to get accustomed to each other. It didn’t take long for those that already worked together and those that hadn’t to gel.

Tomás Isakowitz: Working on developing our own performance and more than that, performance style, is challenging, fun, frustrating, exciting, scary… all of that simultaneously. I have grown tremendously improv-wise. At Conservatory each participant is given very specific pointers on what works, what does not, and how to improve. If you can take the criticism, it will force you to grow. And then, there is the fun exploration of creating our own style. It is a fantastic prelude for on-stage performance, especially for someone who has not performed on a team before.

Josh Depowell: Conservatory class is a really great transition from graduating from PHIT’s core curriculum to establishing your own comedy troupe. The conservatory encouraged us to think about different forms that our group of improvisers would be good at doing. The guidance of a PHIT instructor helped us to realize which things worked and which didn’t, and they guided us through the thinking process of getting to a place where we would have something to put on stage. I think that this is a great opportunity for people planning on putting together improv teams in the future.

WO: What was the most important thing you learned from your instructor, Steve Kleinedler?

Danielle Klaiman: To try to think of the most important thing I’ve learned from Steve is almost impossible. He has helped me hone my listening skills and in class we really focused on the relationship between two characters and how that relationship effects them. Probably the most important thing he’s left me with is, “Don’t drag the fucking chairs or I will come onstage and break that chair over your fucking head!” [Kleinedler adds: I didn’t say this until week 7. But seriously, don’t drag your chairs when editing, people!]

WO: The course is culminating in you and your fellow students performing your own original improv show, the HYDRA. Can you describe the format?

Mike Butler: Without giving too much away, it’s a fast-paced, multi-headed beast of a format. If the Armando is a revolver, we’re a full-auto mini-gun. I’m pretty sure the Hydra will set a Philly improv record for scenes in a show during its run.

Joe Coughlin: With an audience suggestion, we each state a brief line inspired by the suggestion. Then one of us will restate our line and that will inspire three brief scenes. We repeat this until all of us have performed our monologues at which time we will go into a run incorporating many of the ideas we’ve generated throughout the set to that point. It’s fast and it’s furious and it really fits the people performing it.

WO: How did you guys go about creating this totally new, unique form?

Mike Butler: It came together rather quickly. Steve figured out our individual and collective strengths from the first class, specifically through a warm-up session that was only supposed to go 15 minutes but kept going for over 50 minutes. In the next couple classes we found the root of the form through a monologue exercise that the group latched on to. After that, we spent the remaining weeks refining the format and getting accustomed to playing together.

Meredith Weir: Talking, talking, and more talking. After the first four weeks we spent a lot of time focusing on what we noticed our strengths were as a group, and what we each prefer individually. There was so much to pull from because even though we had only been together for a short time there was a lot of repetition in those first couple weeks. Steve, although a great director, really left it up to us. He was there to guide us but for the most part we developed “The Hydra” entirely on our own in an organic fashion. (Even though it’s not an organic show at all—we all like structure!) We took what worked, “yes, and”-ed it and developed a show that PHIT audiences will enjoy.

WO: How do you think the show will evolve throughout its run? Does the group anticipate making any adjustments to the format from performance to performance?

Joe Coughlin: I think the biggest thing is adjusting to playing it in front of an audience. We’ve become comfortable with the format over the past few weeks, it’s just time now to get it in front of a crowd. I’m sure we’ll be up to tweaking it a bit depending on what seems to play or not, but the format is made of some pretty solid building blocks that are arranged in a different way for this show. I’m confident in our ability to adapt.

Danielle Klaiman: It will be very interesting to see how things play out over the run, mostly because not all seven of us will be there for every show. Whenever someone is absent from the group the dynamics automatically shift. Thankfully the format we have created is not reliant on the number of people we have and still works well when someone is absent. We’ve been rehearsing so long without an audience that I think all of us are pumped to reveal all the hard work we’ve been doing and to see how the audience responds. Maybe we’ll tweak a few things here and there, but I feel like we’ve got a real solid format that showcases our individual talents.

Josh Depowell: Throughout the last couple of classes we saw that the pacing of the show picked up and we realized that this helped the performance. I believe that their is a possibility that we will continue to see this throughout the run as well. I do not expect that there will be any major changes to the actual format that we are using. I think that what we have right now is working and that any changes that may be made will be focused on how we are playing within the format.

WO: What aspect of the show do you think will be most exciting for audiences?

Tomás Isakowitz: Experiencing our new style and figuring out how it works! We mix monologues with auto-prompts. The audience is smart and will feel remunerated as the show unrolls and they can see how the fabric is gently produced from the threads they have seen develop.

The PHIT Conservatory ‘HYDRA’ will be performed on May 19th at 7pm, May 26th at 5pm and 7pm, and June 2nd at 7pm at Philly Improv Theater at The Shubin Theatre (407 Bainbridge Street). Advance tickets are available online.